Report: $18 billion spent on immigration shows it is top federal law enforcement priority

In this file photo, Det. Bill Silva, left, with the Bisbee Police Department, and an unnamed agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration patrol a fence line east of Naco, Ariz. (AP Photo/Arizona Daily Star, Mike Christy)

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration spent more
money on immigration enforcement in the last fiscal year than all other
federal law enforcement agencies combined, according to a report on the
government's enforcement efforts from a Washington think tank.

The
report today from the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan
group focused on global immigration issues, said in the 2012 budget year
that ended in September the government spent about $18 billion on
immigration enforcement programs run by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, the US-Visit program, and Customs and Border Protection,
which includes the Border Patrol. Immigration enforcement topped the
combined budgets of the FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Secret Service by
about $3.6 billion dollars, the report's authors said.

Since
then-President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control
Act in 1986 — which legalized more than 3 million illegal immigrants and
overhauled immigration laws — the government has spent more than $187
billion on immigration enforcement. According to the report,
"Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable
Machinery," federal immigration-related criminal prosecutions also
outnumber cases generated by the Justice Department.

The 182-page
report concludes that the Obama administration has made immigration its
highest law enforcement priority. Critics are likely to bristle over its
findings, especially those who have accused the administration of being
soft on immigration violators.

"Today, immigration enforcement
can be seen as the federal government's highest criminal law enforcement
priority, judged on the basis of budget allocations, enforcement
actions and case volumes," MPI Senior Fellow Doris Meissner, a co-author
of the report, said in a statement released with the report.

Meissner said since the 1986 law was passed, immigration enforcement "is a story of growth. The sum of its parts is growth."

Demetrios
Papademetriou, MPI's president, said that the authors reviewed
immigration enforcement policies and spending from 1986 on amid ongoing
disagreements in Congress on whether border security and enforcement
efforts needed to be solidified before reform could be tackled.

"No
nation anywhere in the world has been as determined, has made as deep
and expensive a commitment to or has had as deep a reach in its
enforcement efforts as the U.S. has had," Papademetriou said.

According to federal budgets reviewed by
MPI, CBP spent about $11.7 billion on its enforcement operations while
ICE had a budget of about $5.9 billion in 2012. US-Visit accounted for
about $307 million.

As spending has risen in recent years, the
number of arrests at the border has steadily dropped. In 2011, agents
made about 327,000 arrests at the southern border, the fewest in nearly
40 years. The Homeland Security Department also removed a record 396,906
immigrants that year. In 2012, nearly 410,000 people were removed from
the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
has repeatedly touted those statistics as evidence that the border is
now more secure than ever.

Experts have attributed the drop in
arrests to a combination of factors, including record numbers of Border
Patrol agents stationed along the Mexican border. Meissner said that the
growth of illegal immigration in the U.S. is now at a standstill.

The
report also highlighted workplace enforcement changes from raids
targeting illegal immigrants to paperwork audits designed to root out
employers who routinely hire illegal immigrant workers and the volume of
people removed annually.

The report by MPI's Meissner, Muzaffar
Chishti, Donald Kerwin and Claire Bergeron, comes amid renewed interest
in immigration reform from Congress and the White House. In the
immediate aftermath of the November election, congressional Republicans
suggested the time was right to begin reform talks anew. President
Barack Obama, who won a record share of Hispanic voters, renewed a
previous pledge to make immigration reform a priority.

In the lead
up to the election, Obama made several administrative changes to the
immigration system, including launching a program to allow some young
illegal immigrants to avoid deportation and work legally in the country
for up to two years. His administration also refocused enforcement
efforts to target criminal immigrants and those who posed a security
threat. And just last week, the administration announced a rule change
to allow some illegal immigrant spouses and children of U.S. citizens to
stay in the country while they ask the government to waive 3- or
10-year bans on returning to the United States. Immigrants who win the
waiver will still need to leave the country to complete visa paperwork,
but will be able to leave without fear of being barred from returning to
their families for up to a decade. The rule, first proposed last year,
goes into effect in March.

Republican lawmakers have widely
criticized the policy changes, routinely describing them as "backdoor
amnesty." Many of those same lawmakers have said the border needs to be
secured before reform can be taken up.